100% Humboldt
Humboldt County CA USA is the home of some of the most iconoclastic, genuine, and interesting folks in the world.
We are getting curious about the movers, shakers, and difference makers in Humboldt County CA-Home of the giant redwoods, 6 Rivers, and the vast Pacific Ocean.
We will discover what makes people live/evolve in the beautiful, diverse, isolated, and ever-changing Northcoast of California 100%!
Listen in and learn what it is to be 100% Humboldt
Learn More at https://100humboldt.com/
100% Humboldt
#11. Adam Dick: The Story of Dick Taylor Chocolate
From the vibrant expanses of California to the world of artisan chocolate making, Adam Dick, co-founder of Dick Taylor Chocolate, shares his intriguing journey with us in this episode. A once aspiring forestry major turned recreation administration student, Adam's path was far from ordinary. His chance meeting with his future wife, Deanna, a shared passion for music with co-founder Dustin, and a turning point in the form of a YouTube video, all played instrumental roles in shaping his unique story.
Adam unveils how the humble beginnings of Dick Taylor Chocolate started from curiosity sparked by a YouTube video. Fueled by their love for craftsmanship, Adam and Dustin transformed their curiosity into a thriving business. A potent mix of guerrilla marketing, impactful packaging design, and the power of digital influence took their venture to new heights, even landing them a feature on a television show, "Somebody's Gotta Do It," hosted by Mike Rowe. The duo's relentless pursuit of their passion is a testament to the power of determination and creativity.
In reflection, Adam emphasizes the importance of community, family, and mentorship in their journey. Humboldt County, their supportive landlord, and the local community have all played pivotal roles in their success. As we reminisce about their experiences, we also look towards the future and what it may hold for Humboldt County. Join us to get a glimpse of Adam's incredible journey, full of passion, hard work, and of course, a lot of chocolate!
About 100% Humboldt with Scott Hammond
Humboldt County CA USA is the home of some of the most iconoclastic, genuine, and interesting folks in the world.
We are getting curious about the movers, shakers, and difference makers in Humboldt County CA-Home of the giant redwoods, 6 Rivers, and the vast Pacific Ocean.
We will discover what makes people live/evolve in the beautiful, diverse, isolated, and ever-changing North Coast of California 100%!
Listen in and learn what it is to be 100% Humboldt!
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Hey, welcome Adam Jik to 100%.
Speaker 2:Humboldt, thanks. Thanks for having me. It's great, exciting to be here.
Speaker 1:We're excited to have you, man. We're big fans around here and just want to learn more about you, the company, your journey, your family and so what? Let's just start there. How'd you get to Humboldt? What's your Humboldt story?
Speaker 2:Let's see. So where do we start? Way, way, way back. I mean, it really starts prior At the beginning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in the beginning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, when I went to my parents' divorce and I was really young and I moved kind of all around with my mom and we. She has family in the Midwest, in Kansas City. So after I graduated grade school we moved back to be with her family in Kansas City and I went into middle school and high school there and when I was getting close to graduating I knew that I didn't want to go to school in Kansas or in the Midwest. I wanted to be out of that area and Snow or barbecue.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was born in California. I was born in Lake Tahoe and went to grade school in Southern California, in Orange County. So I'm like, I feel like I'm from California.
Speaker 1:So Casey would be a shock in every way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I liked going to high school there. There's something nice and a little bit more leisurely about that Midwestern pace of life, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:So, I liked that. I mean, I liked being around all my moms, brothers and sisters and then that whole cousin thing was all was really, really great. But when it came to go to college, I wanted to come back out to California and my dad always lived in California so I could get in state tuition. That was also really important. Benefit Yep and the. You know, the only school I ever applied to for college was Humboldt State University. Yeah, you too, I had no backups. Did you get in? I did, but ironically it took them forever to get me the information.
Speaker 1:So funny.
Speaker 2:Anyway. So you know I wanted, I wanted somewhere. I didn't want to live in LA, I didn't want to live in a big city, I wanted somewhere, you know, remote and unique, and you know I was going to be. I thought I wanted to be a forestry major. I had this dream that I was going to be a park ranger.
Speaker 2:And I don't know why in my mind I thought that a park ranger needed a degree in forestry. But that's why I started. So funny, it lasted a semester and then I transferred to the recreation program and got a degree in recreation administration.
Speaker 1:This is so weird for me to just. I almost stopped the show. Don't stop the show. So same story from San Diego. Oh, really, I wanted to be a forest ranger, me and my friend Philip, and we were going to be driving around a four-wheel drive and smoking weed and be those guys, and I thought, hey, I'll be a forestry major. Humboldt, oh right, founded on microfish, do you remember? That stuff, yeah, at a career center in Nashville city where we're from and came up here and immediately went into recreation administration. Weird parallel.
Speaker 2:Wait, you have a degree in rec In rec, yeah, at Humboldt before Chip.
Speaker 1:Really the guy right before you know Chip is your guy right? Oh yeah, and Greg Simmons, I think Right, Nice guys and they were right after a guy named Bob St Peter's who forged his credentials and found his way selling yachts in Florida. Weird, wow, weird journey.
Speaker 2:I didn't realize. Yeah, and the funny. If you want to take it even weirder, Dustin is also a rec major.
Speaker 1:Really, yeah, wow, the Dick Taylor the.
Speaker 2:Taylor part of yeah, that's funny the Dick part and the Taylor part of Were you guys same class. No, he's two years, I think, behind me.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is that?
Speaker 1:a dig at Dustin.
Speaker 2:Wait, he is two years behind. You know I'm a little ahead. No, I'm actually a little jealous of Dustin these days, because he seems to move around a little more spryly than I do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's got some spring.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm like oh, that two years makes a big difference, just wait.
Speaker 1:Just three actually.
Speaker 2:But anyway, he'll catch up one of these days and I'll say We'll do. I told you so.
Speaker 1:The DNA catches us. So you wanted, but Humboldt got your degree Mm-hmm. Did you meet your wife there?
Speaker 2:No Another story. So when there's so many stories, there's all stories. So when I was a junior in high school I had, you know, found myself on the wrong side of the law, Well, playing a little too much in high school. So that was my junior year. So the summer after my junior year my parents shipped me out to Lake Tahoe they had a house there, my dad always did To get a job, be away from my bad influence friends in Kansas City and hopefully get my life, you know, straightened out again. Kansas City gangster people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so spent the summer, you know, basically trying to find a job. It was very difficult because all the local high school kids had already snatched up all the high school jobs, so I did like a few odd things. But towards the end of the summer I got invited on a backpack trip with some other local high school kids. I had made a friend you know, a common friend and my wife, deanna, was on that trip.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And so we kind of met and kindled a little romance at the end of that summer of our junior year. And then I went back to Kansas City and we did the whole long distance thing and she applied to Humboldt State as well as her financial backup. She was going to go to some other private schools, so she ended up going to Humboldt too, and it wasn't that we had, you know, planned it, but it was certainly a definite benefit that would be both at the same place.
Speaker 1:What do they call that? It's not coincidence providence, Maybe yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nice Either way. So then we, you know, went to college together, both graduated and we're kind of a little bit on and off again, but eventually got married.
Speaker 1:Nice, and you guys have four daughters, three, three beautiful daughters. Nice, yeah, because I remember our kids, our homeschool kids ran with your daughters at Sequoia Park here in Eureka, which is right about over here on the map, as you see, sequoia Park Anyway.
Speaker 2:The odd part is our oldest daughter is now the same age as when I met my wife. That part's tripping me out right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got to deal with that Something to think about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were married. I was 21 and she was 20. Oh wow.
Speaker 2:In.
Speaker 1:Humboldt and I was going to be in a senior recreation and got a job traded at rec program for five bucks an hour.
Speaker 2:I was big in bank man, yeah right Taking the bus.
Speaker 1:This guy living in a Victorian upstairs in Arcade at the Esther Homes Remember.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, charles, mccann, Yep McCann home.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, back in the day they called the Honeyman Suite 250 a month. Wow, no, first or last, and it worked out great Rec stuff, and then, anyway, nine kids later. That's my story, your journey. So who are you at 15? What were you all about? Were you in KC then?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was gosh. This is where it starts. Do you get my inner underbelly? But I was just like in high school I was very I'm just like kind of a socially shy, awkward person. I don't not really outgoing or gregarious, don't make friends like super easily. So high school was not my favorite time. Pretty happy when that was over. I think it was hard. I moved from somebody already who was like a little bit not socially as strong as others, moving from Southern California to Kansas City where the only person that I knew was my you know cousin, james, and he's my same age and so and we were really good friends.
Speaker 2:But it was just one of those things, like I just always felt like I was on the outside, the other guy, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like I mean, he, my cousin, did a great job of assimilating me into his group of friends, but you know they have a lifetime together, right Going to grade school and all this and I'm here, you know, come on the side. So yeah, high school was, you know, wasn't really like the most amazing time for me. Sure, and you know I kind of went, got into, you know. So come to a lot of peer pressure and things like that, just trying to find a way that I could connect with people.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Right. When I came out to Humboldt State, though it was an entirely different story. Yeah, I was like I felt like all of a sudden, like you know, I could be who I wanted to be. Everybody came to Humboldt State. Nobody had previous friends, it was a blank slate for everybody.
Speaker 1:That's a great point. It's a fresh start.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a fresh start and it it was like I just found my like rhythm and my stride and I I loved college and all of that scene was so fun.
Speaker 1:I think you know, shout out to all the homes, homeschoolers, all the high schoolers who are. You know we romanticize that and it's I don't know. High school is a weird time. It is yeah you know and it's like you're finding your, your voice and your life and but college, yeah, you come to Humboldt, hey, you can bike and backpack and right and there's people of in the rec program that you small enough department, you could get to know people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:It's not, yeah, it's low key.
Speaker 2:And Humboldt State in general is a or Cal Poly Humboldt, I guess it is now is a pretty small, you know, very welcoming, really friendly campus.
Speaker 1:Another hard stop Cal Poly. Humboldt is the new Humboldt State, yeah.
Speaker 2:We will probably refer to it as Humboldt State regularly throughout this podcast, every other podcast.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, went to Humboldt State. Yeah, you went to where. Yeah, we're old, we're old timers here, it used to be Humboldt College.
Speaker 2:Right, it was a teacher's school, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they did a thing on TV the other day. It was really interesting. So who were you at 20? Were you? You were at Humboldt then having a good time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's see 20. I think that would be my junior, junior year, I think. Did you work? I worked in the summers. I was actually quite fortunate to, you know, have parents that were able to kind of support me through college. I didn't have to work, I did. I did work in the summer times. I okay, a couple summers I went back to Tahoe and worked and then I actually I worked one summer in the receiving department at Pearson's Building Center, Sweet, and did a few summers, you know, doing construction and carpentry and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:But I think in my junior year, if I'm if I've got my dates right I was actually really fortunate to do this program called Semester at Sea. Have you heard of it before? It's through the University of Pittsburgh now and it used to be through Chapman call or somewhere, I think, in Southern California, but it's called the Institute for Shipboard Education and they have a big cruise ship and you spend a semester on that cruise ship traveling all around the world. And I had my stepmother had done it when she was in college and I had, fortunately I had a grandmother that was willing to like foot that bill, and so it was a really, really neat experience. I guess at 20. That was a pretty formative thing. We started, let's see. I'll give you a quick overview.
Speaker 2:We started in Vancouver, British Columbia, and then, went over to Kobe, japan, shanghai, china, hong Kong, vietnam. Then we went all around India, went to Egypt, cyprus, greece, spain, morocco and then back to Florida.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And all the way around the world?
Speaker 1:Did you get off board every time? Did you go do the stuff?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when you were on the boat you had actual college class schedules. You had like an A to B schedule and then in port, all the classes had certain amount of port assignments that you had to accomplish. So, it wasn't like you had assignment in every port, but everywhere you stopped, usually you had to do something for one of the classes, gotcha. It was a really neat experience. It was short, it was. The most we ever stayed in One place was like five or six days, I think. So long time in port actually.
Speaker 2:It is yeah, but I've kind of felt like you just got a little bit of a snippet of a country. And then it was basically to decide if you wanted to go back there again.
Speaker 1:We went to Ireland and Scotland and England last summer and you get a day in port.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just enough to kind of like wet your whistle.
Speaker 1:I want to go back to Edinburgh for a week. Just Edinburgh's cool man, it's just Scotland's so bomb. So how many months was that at sea?
Speaker 2:It was a whole semester, so three or four months, I think.
Speaker 1:Man. What a great opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was really.
Speaker 1:Did you have to work on the ship too? Did they make you a server?
Speaker 2:No no, no no Cause there's a whole crew of those guys. Yeah, there's a huge crew. I mean I think there was six or 600 crew members. I mean it's quite extensive.
Speaker 1:No, they get off and go play. They go nuts. At least that's what I saw. These guys are all over the world. Really nice. Yeah, it was neat. It was really neat. I mean, I was really about to humbled after that and finished up.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:Did you graduate I?
Speaker 2:did. Yeah, I graduated in 2000 with a degree in Recreation Administration and I'm a business minor, wow.
Speaker 1:And so how did that translate into your early building career?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I guess I wouldn't say it transferred really. I mean, other than I got a lot of great. I learned how to like be responsible. I feel like college to a large degree, the first time you lived alone, the first time you've had to. Your parents aren't really telling you to get schoolwork done. I mean you gotta be motivated intrinsically Laundry.
Speaker 2:There's dishes, exactly. But I think Dustin and I or myself I guess I really like working with my hands. I like making things, I'm really interested in how things are made and always fascinated with traditional ways of doing things, and I think that that's why when we started doing carpentry but what we really liked was doing architectural mill work and finding, replicating or duplicating old case work and things like that, and so that's, I think what's been always like a driving force is that. So I think that that's kinda why we ended up doing carpentry was because it scratched. That itch paid really well, humboldt County. It was a great pay and it's fairly flexible I was just saying, unlike recreation.
Speaker 1:Five bucks an hour folks.
Speaker 2:Right. But I liked carpentry because it was like you worked three days, four days. It just was very easy to say, okay, I'm not gonna be here for a week or a couple days, and so it allowed us to recreate and have a real flexible.
Speaker 1:And be flexible. Yeah, and it was fun and interesting. So you guys hung out immediately after college, after he graduated too. Yeah, I mean, we knew each other, we had a partnership and a friendship.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were friends before that, I mean mainly through church and things like that. But I think what we had even before the carpentry thing was really a just like a. We liked music. We had a very common bond in music. That's great, and so that's probably like initially what brought us together. And then I think there was just like Dustin's dad was the county carpenter, my dad's a contractor in LA, so we both were kind of raised around that, so it seemed kind of easy to yeah, was there industrial science at Humboldt?
Speaker 1:Was that a gone industrial arts program? I don't even know. I think it was gone by the time you got there. Really, yeah, there was a pretty big program for a long time. It's one of those they whacked, but anyway, yeah. So I remember, dustin, when Steven Laurie and everybody got here from Hawaii 100 years ago, you know, and those guys a long time, so 25, what's happening now? Are you? You're graduated, you've got a budding business. Are you married at 25?
Speaker 2:I think I got. I don't know, maybe it was 26 or 27 that we got married. I had I had you know by this time I had graduated from college, from Humboldt State. I didn't get a rec job like right out of the gate. I did apply, I applied it. I just got a random interview through a friend at Point Loma Same journey. No, no, yeah, they were yeah, they were looking for, you know, like a resident recreation director, so it was like it seemed like a great fit. Sydney of Point Loma. No, the university.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, the private Christian school yeah.
Speaker 2:So I thought, okay, you know we'll give it a shot. So I interviewed I mean, arguably it was probably quite a long shot, you know about that. But so anyway, I didn't get the job, that job, and so I moved home back to Lake Tahoe my parents still had the house there and I just decided, like you know what I'm just gonna? You know, I've been going to school continuously, didn't take a gap year or anything, so I'm like I'm just gonna like ski bum for you know a winter or two, why not?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Had a cheap place to stay, and so that's basically what I did for a couple years. I never like lift, opt or anything like that, which is kind of ironic, but I did get a job. First job I worked after college was I was the receiving manager for Swigards True Value Hardware in Tahoe City, california. Sweet yeah, because, why not? Because why not? Yeah, I mean, it was, you know, it paid the bills and they were gonna hire me. So that was great. So I did that, but I, you know it was one of those things that wasetime here's how you do it. It provided me a paycheck, but it was not that interesting. I really didn't love that job, sure.
Speaker 1:Well, people worked a ski there, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, right. So I I can't remember how many months I worked that, but eventually I quit that job and I got a job Working at the Rubicon deli, nice, and it was a little Deli inside the place called the Tahoe Tree Company. It was like a nursery, you know, in Tahoe City, and the owner's name was Shari Corselia and she that it was the first like food job I ever had. I Like to eat, I always have. I like to cooking, you know. So I got a job at this little deli and it was like it was a hop in place. I mean, every morning we baked all the bread fresh, prepped all the ingredients, and then you know when lunchtime would hit there. It was just like this is still there.
Speaker 2:Rubicon? I don't think that it is. I think that Shari is in in Reno Maybe or Chico, I can't remember. She had a son that that was helping out with the business too, but anyway, just made delicious sandwiches and her you know her love of food and her Just like she was so cool and so I, you know I really I loved that job, so I worked at the Rubicon deli during the day.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm and then a few nights a week, I would deliver pizzas at this place called Jiffy's Pizza. This total like dive Ratty pizza place, but it was. You know, it was at night and it was tips and it was great. So those were the. So I actually I loved those jobs. I loved delivering pizzas was so great. Just chill, drive around. Yep, just drive around, you know, yeah, no beautiful night, yeah, nobody like hounding you for anything.
Speaker 1:So and I really liked that and no one complains, because it's Jiffy's Pizza and you're gonna just Get a basic pizza right, they're not gonna be it mad.
Speaker 2:Right, it wasn't round table exactly, so so did that. And then God and I was, so I did that, for it was home for two years, and then I, after that I I got involved with a with a Christian missions organization called Youth of the Mission, sure, and I did a they have like a kind of an entry level, you know, kind of missions training school that I did it's like a semester long thing and was it the one in Hawaii?
Speaker 1:It?
Speaker 2:wasn't in Hawaii. The school that I did was in Victoria.
Speaker 1:Oh, very nice.
Speaker 2:So we did that and worked with some different you know Christian like snowboarding and skate groups. It was most like a board riders type thing, and so did that. And when I was done with that, that's when I moved back up to Humboldt and I've been here pretty much since then nice kind of thought I was going to stay with that. You know missions group, but we really kind of the carpentry thing yeah took over again.
Speaker 1:Is it okay to ask about how you and your wife finally made full circle and oh? Such a cute story when we heard it in blue leg last year.
Speaker 2:Okay, I don't know we got enough time left on the podcast.
Speaker 1:You have 10 seconds? Yeah, no, you guys. So she had. She had been overseas, right yeah?
Speaker 2:right. So you know, we kind of dated, mostly on but a little bit off through college. By the time we graduated we were not together but she and she went overseas and she started doing midwifery work. She got trained as a midwife Overseas and she did a bunch of midwifery work in Nepal, in Nigeria.
Speaker 1:Did she still do that?
Speaker 2:she's. She's not doing much with midwifery currently she does, you know, occasionally, but she. So she, she got her training overseas and she worked as a midwife overseas for about two years and then she Came back to the States and we, you know kind of we were like, well, either work, we were gonna get married, because we had kind of been talking throughout this time and so, sure enough, she decided to marry me and nice, yeah, hey, wait, a barrier.
Speaker 1:Just like me, exactly. So a lot of parallels here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it took it, you know, from the time that we met the junior you know, the summer of our junior year in high school till the time we got married was about 10 years, wow, so that's a long court show. It was yeah, I felt like I I knew her pretty well by the time that we got married.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's wonderful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which does help, because marriage isn't it's always easy. No, it's it's work, it's, it is it's for sure, work and if you want it, if you want it to last and you want it to be, you know, successful, then that takes a lot of work.
Speaker 1:It does it's communication. I want to drop in a real pithy quote, right now but I really can't think of one, but you think of one out there. So tell me, tell us about your current job. What do you? What do you do? What's your title? What? What's your per? I mean, besides performer, and we know we'll get there. But tell me about what. Tell me about the Dick Taylor journey. I saw you in micro. Yeah, what a great guy he is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Dick Taylor journey has been. You know really what's you know consumed my life for the past 13 years now right.
Speaker 1:So so the building thing made segue makes segue into Alamquist lumber in some way, I'm sure. Yeah, he was provider of materials and then right or a rental space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we, you know. So we we were, we had been doing carpentry, you know, for about 12 years, and we had restored some wood boats, did a lot of mill work, architectural mill work, and built a lot of cabinets and furniture, and so that was just. You know, we were kind of on that clip and you know, typical in Humboldt County, we'd work part-time for cash, you know, doing little side jobs, and occasionally we'd bounce around from contractor to contractor. And you know, I think that Dustin and I or at least I always saw myself as a, as a Crafts person, a craftsman I the the word contractor to me was like, I don't know, somehow like a derogatory word. You know, builder contract yeah, because that wasn't that. It didn't seem to capture who Dustin and I were. Right At the core, you know, we felt like carpenters and not contractors. But you know, as you, you know, as you now start to have young families and You're thinking like is this, is this my career path for the rest of my?
Speaker 2:life yeah and if it is, which is fine, then we probably should, you know, take the leap and get our contractors license and you know, I'm like do a real business. We're like at 30s now and it's like time to go time yeah let's be adults finally.
Speaker 2:So you know, I think that we were. We were ready to shift something up and it seemed like at the time we were just gonna shift deeper into doing carpentry. And and a friend of Dustin's, who's a video guy, local videographer, passed him this video of these brothers that make chocolate in Brooklyn. It was like a little YouTube thing, very innocent, you know. Yeah, his friend liked it because the cinematography was really cool and these two guys were sailors and so there was like he's like you guys will probably get a kick out of this. That was, I think, his intent. Yeah, we saw it and thought, whoa, whoa, this is really cool. Like I had never epiphany time. Yeah, I never thought like where does chocolate come from?
Speaker 2:Yeah who knows, even I mean at the time who knew.
Speaker 2:Pennsylvania right, exactly, just like it, just there at the grocery store. So they're in Safeway, right, who cares where it comes from? So, to see the process, you know from these like rough, dirty, dusty cocoa beans, and then you know series of steps, whatever it comes out as these, like beautiful chocolate bars. You know, I'm thinking this is this is really really neat, and so that kind of got the wheels turning and I think that you know it wasn't like we had this like hatched business plan instantly. It was more of a this curiosity like huh, could I homebrew a chocolate bar? Right, you know? I mean, when you know I've built violins before, I, you know I could buy a violin or I could make a violin. You know you make the violin and you learn along the way, all that goes into it and you're probably gonna make a violin. That doesn't sound very good, right, and you have to be okay with that, right, getting into the process. But going through all those steps really helps you to understand and connect with the finished product a lot. So I was like let's, let's homebrew some chocolate bars. You know why not, let's do this.
Speaker 2:So you know, I, we looked around online and found like a there's a place in Eugene called chocolate alchemy. You can buy cocoa beans from around the world by the pound. Okay, and they got a little blog that talks, tells, you know how to make it, a few user forums, and then they also sell some countertop size like grinding equipment to you know, make chocolate bar on your countertop. So we got some simple stuff and started Experimenting and make it stuff. Yeah, making chocolate, and I mean it was awful. I mean, what do you expect? You've never made any before.
Speaker 1:You're probably not gonna be the nail at first time. That first batch of beers, Don't?
Speaker 2:they're great right exactly so you know. So it wasn't great but it was. It was very different than you know. It didn't taste like a Hershey bar, it didn't taste like anything that really you were bought, you could buy in the grocery store. I mean didn't have vanilla in it for one.
Speaker 2:Which is a huge, you know, flavor Enhancer or adulterant, depending on which way you look at it, in most chocolate bars. So what had no vanilla? And it was really like Fruity flavored or floral flavor. I mean, it was like the chocolate was like alive you know something else. Yeah, I had something else. I think that that's that was interesting and that kept us you know, huh, homebrewing and homebrewing.
Speaker 1:And so you continue to do that while you built, and then yeah, I mean we were Eric at some point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you know you have eventually you've got. You know, you know you're making so much of it that you know you're giving it to friends. And you know, and some's like you, I should sell this stuff. It's like so, yeah, why don't you sell it? And so, you know, then we're like, yeah, let's sell this. And so that's when we, you know, got the like, you know, started doing a little market research and finding out what was going on at the time. And when we started in 2010, there was, you know, maybe maybe 20 chocolate manufacturers in the United States period. Wow, you know, that's a big and little.
Speaker 2:Yeah, big and little, I mean that's like not you know, you're not even at one per state, you're not even at one at half the states at that point opportunities, yeah. So at the time there was, like there was probably about Five maybe craft chocolate makers, people that had started about three or four years before us and kind of had these little fledgling craft chocolate businesses and the rest were the large-scale manufacturers you know. So imagine if there was, like you know, think about the beer industry now, right, craft breweries.
Speaker 2:There's hundreds and hundreds and thousands, sure of them you know, imagine a time when it was like Sierra Nevada, was it? And Budweiser, you know, and did to shoots, yeah, and like that. So it was. You know we're like okay, so there's, there's not many of these craft makers, there's probably some market share to be. And then what gain? And that?
Speaker 2:the beer thing certainly blew up, yeah. And the third wave caught, you know, you know, I think that's a really good thing. Third wave caught, you know, coffee's gone, kind of that same right way. So we felt like there was, you know market share. And then of course it's like how well, where do we? We need a commercial kitchen, and all yeah yeah yeah, and then, like you said, you know we were going out to on quists all the time for our Materials, for making all of our projects.
Speaker 1:I probably don't knew you loved you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm. You know, we walked past in the front of the on quest building. You know there's like a little cafe that had been vacant for years and so we're like, well, it's vacant, you know, maybe Eric would give us a deal on it. So we, we, we talked to Eric on quests and said, hey, you know how much for the space up there, and he, you know, gave it to us for a song, including utilities, and because that's who he is, yeah, he's a great guy and you know mentor kind of a guy yeah and he believed in us.
Speaker 2:I guess I don't know why, sure, but you know we had Dustin. I had figured out we, like on the back of a napkin, well, okay, the rent there, I think it was, I don't know, it's like maybe 300 bucks a month or something, 350. Yeah, and utilities included as a gift, it was a gift, yeah. But even at that, you know, we were looking at like in order to just cover the rent, not pay ourselves, but just like pay the rent. You know we needed to sell, remember was like 25 chocolate bars a week, oh, you know, and I'd never sold any, so it seemed like just this Crushing. You know, I think to myself how am I the numbers didn't? Yeah, how am.
Speaker 1:I gonna.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, yeah, I was not stoned. A hundred a month, yeah, like this is nuts, I'm gonna make that and sell it. But you know, we kind of like Believed that we could, or, you know, I figured well a couple months of this. If we don't make any money it's only 600 bucks, dustin I'll split that rent each and then we'll fold business up, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good, good business plan, yeah, a lot of hope.
Speaker 2:Dustin and I have always had many.
Speaker 1:We like to keep like a lot off ramps all the time and be guys always a plan B and D.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very strong. Plan B, always yeah. So you know, we were like, okay, well, let's give it a shot. And we were making chocolate on Mondays and then doing carpentry every other day, you know, tuesday through Friday, the day job, yeah, yeah and then you know we would like, we'd go online To our like competitors and find their like retailer list. Sure, you know, cuz they've all everybody's talked about where they're selling their chocolate so that the customers can find it.
Speaker 2:So we're like oh sweet Look at all these accounts. So then we started Email and contacting those accounts, sending them samples and like just gorilla marketing and want to try this yeah, that's free and sure enough, you know you pick up. You know, like the import, and there's a chocolate shop called the meadow and you know If you can get your stuff on the shelf in the meadow, you're huge. Yeah, then all the other stores are looking to the meadow for what's hot, what's the trend, what's coming in. You know they like Peruse at the meadow.
Speaker 1:So then there's a big gap, and then there's Whole Foods yeah, which would be so quick question. So what's the top three things that happened to break? That were the breakaway things that sent you to a bigger, bigger volume hmm, I. Know you were wrecked. You've been recognized. The food shows and this chocolate shows.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean one thing early on that was that was very Like important.
Speaker 2:I guess in our some of our decision-making.
Speaker 2:We, when we first started you know wanting to have lots of plan B's and low, low in you know, input cost we decided we would just use like an off this, off the shelf mold, like something that was very standard, and we were wrapping it in these like Italian printed papers, like our brat of packaging doesn't look anything like it does now, right, very different with just like anything we had grab off the shelf to make an elegant looking package.
Speaker 2:So we were selling our chocolate bars and we had a little quasi like online website. You know that you could shop a few things and, yeah, chocolate blogger in, I think, New York, or she might have been in Michigan, I can't remember, but I wish you bought a pretty famous or well-known chocolate blogger, picked up some of our bars and reviewed them, huh and, and you know, reamed us pretty good for lots of different things, but it really was. That was kind of the first point. This had only been maybe five months or so into it that we realized like, hey, there might be interest outside of Humboldt County for this stuff.
Speaker 2:You know, I mean like good people are seeing it at a much wider audience, and so that was when we kind of felt like we should probably like Redesign the mold and really try to do what we can to make this thing like presentation. Yeah, present, well, yeah and so, yeah, that's only that's when we design the mold and the wrapper design. I had a. I had a bar here is gonna.
Speaker 1:I brought some, did you? Oh okay, you want to just really 30 seconds walk us through Kind of what a bar looks. I'll hold one up and you can hold one up, maybe the graphics, and oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Here you can take that one, thank you. Yeah, so this is our, you know, this are our, this are 72 percent believes. Okay, when we first started making chocolate, we just made plain, single origin dark chocolate bars like this two ingredients, just cocoa beans and cane sugar, which is very different than what you Typically would find in like a mass produced chocolate, sure. So the formulation was pretty simple, really stripped down and, yeah, so this is kind of what we, you know like, hang our hats on this kind of stuff. But we now have, you know, a whole line of bars would be a package is gorgeous, I mean.
Speaker 1:So you guys did all the, had all this done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all of the line work, you know. So when we were, when we were doing this, all this packaging, design and trying to kind of really brand ourselves and come up with a look, dustin's brother, garrett, at the time, was an illustrator at Pixar, right, so it was really he. You know, we loved Garrett's style. Garrett kind of, you know well, he lived his whole life with Dustin so he kind of really knew what drove Dustin. Right, it was really easy, you know Garrett's. Everything Garrett drew were like Perfect, sweet.
Speaker 1:So yes, all these his illustrations Wow.
Speaker 2:And Garrett also designed the bar mold, so that kind of like fluidly filigree right thing is also Garrett's design. But you know what the with the boat kind of motif, you know, for us this really we wanted something that told the story, yeah, of what was inside, without telling you, like what was inside. Right, you know what I mean. Right, you know when we were looking at, when we were designing our packaging. You know almost all chocolate bar wrappers are Brown or black with the butterfly or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, most always glossy, you know. So it has like a whole look. When you go to the grocery store, there's the chocolate bars, have like a look, yeah, even though that, even though they're different brands, you know yeah. So we were like, well, we don't want brown, we don't want glossy, you know not that we wanted everything that was opposite of that, and so that was kind of where we had ended up with a white.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna see the flowers on there yeah there's no flowers.
Speaker 2:But I think for us, you know, the image of the boat Obviously kind of speaks a little bit to you know who Dustin and I are culture that we're really interested in. You know we're both sailors.
Speaker 1:It's really a humble. Yeah, we both maritime, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:And I think that you know, as far as building a wooden boat, it's, it's one of the more complicated woodworking projects you know you could undertake. You've got, you know. On a boat, you've got Curves that are constantly changing throughout the length of the boat. You know it's not a boss, right, it's not, it's not. You never, you never rip a board at 12 degrees and expect it to. You know, match up to the next one. It the angle is constantly changing 12, 11, 10, and you know. So you're constantly having to cut these rolling bevels. It's all done by hand.
Speaker 1:So the metaphor with that and chocolate, right, I'm like yeah.
Speaker 2:The amount of craftsmanship that goes into building a wood boat. Yeah, high degree. So we wanted it to speak to, you know, inside craftsmanship. That was kind of our idea. But then, like you had said, a lot of the early lumber schooners that sailed timber up and down the West Coast were built on the Humboldt Bay Right, like literally right across where our factory is.
Speaker 2:Is that funny, yeah, yeah, and you know the Thayer that's down at Hyde Street, yeah, and in San Francisco at the maritime park that was built, huh, right out there on Samoa and it's still Still floating, sailing, you know.
Speaker 2:So I think it gives us a sense of place. Like you were saying, the tradition in Humboldt County, like a boat building and of that craftsmanship has been long-standing Mm-hmm, that I don't think most people probably pick that. Yeah, that little bit up, but it's definitely was something that we thought about a lot. You know how do we give it a sense of place?
Speaker 1:Would you be offended if I pop this open?
Speaker 2:No, no, no. I brought these because I think that.
Speaker 1:So this is our favorite thing. This is our date night. Joni and I go up to a who to point and have a whole thing. Nick, this is for you too. So we pop open the, the van. Here comes the dictator truck that picked Nick, the music bottle of red wine Maybe, and then, and then this happens oh, the rapper. And I think it's really key. I don't, can you zoom Really. I think it's really key to see the packaging, but also to see the. What did you call it? It's not called the imprint.
Speaker 2:Well, just the bar mold. You know, we had the bar mold, you know, designed, that's what gives the bars. You know, because the chocolates obviously poured into the molds in a liquid state.
Speaker 1:I would normally not break this these open like this, but I think it's really key to see that. Can you see that imprint the Florida Florida Lee?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had. We had told Garrett who designed it. You know, we said we kind of, we kind of like our guy all socks, that was like his design. You know, it was some of his design inspiration and then he came out with that and it was just, it was perfect. That's nice. The funny thing is, you know, you know we didn't have a lot of experience at the time, but you know, typically when you design chocolate bar molds, the more Detailed that you have in the mold, the more difficult it is to get it to mold without air bubbles and other a lot of detail there, pockets and man.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and as we, we did the tour couple month, your reference tour. It was fun. It has the pop.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's a little softer, yeah, and it's a milk chocolate and it does have the hazelnuts in it, so wouldn't pop as much. Yeah, milk chocolate is always a lot softer because of the milk protein in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm saying my mouth's watering, I'm going, man, I wonder why I get to pop into this thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the you know the milk chai brought that milk chocolate, some one of my favorite things now it's a great milk chocolate bar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we use, you know Alexander, family farms. They're down in. They have a farm in Crescent City but also down in Ferndale and they make A2, a2 milk, which is a. It's a a to a to his way they describe the milk protein. And it's a. It was kind of how I think cows, the milk from cows should Traditionally was a to a to, and then we've through the years have bred for a different kind of milk protein that actually I think is harder to digest. Oh, so some people that have lactose problems can hand me to a to milk, no problem.
Speaker 2:So that's the first thing. That's cool, but what's it? What's amazing is they make that a to a to milk into a whole milk powder. Sweet yeah, organic. A to a to home plays right into your which is exactly what we need for chocolate, so it's like it's the only kind in the world. They're the only ones doing it. It's so we feel so fortunate to have a really sourced.
Speaker 2:Yeah, try it over and get some yep and it's just delicious. It's like really, really amazing. The hazelnuts come from Oregon. You know the the Philbert as we call it.
Speaker 1:Here is the state.
Speaker 2:It's the state nut of Oregon. They make the best cuz. Yeah, yeah. But what's interesting in the? In the chocolate industry, everybody's like the Italian hazelnuts, you know. Or the ones, whatever, but I'm like why don't? I didn't want to import Italian hazelnuts, but I'm like it's the state. They're up in Eugene yeah like, let's just get it there, you know, so yeah, so we're a much more Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 1:French wine versus Napa Valley's got Sonoma's got everything you need? Sure, yeah. So so walk us through a Quick little timeline, if you would be willing to, from from all quest, some of the early breaks the first location down on fifth, fourth and then your new location and some of the yeah, because you markedly you've done this. I mean, you guys have turned some sort of a corner in terms of About success production.
Speaker 2:Yeah joy tired. Sleeping a little yeah, but let's see. So we, you know we were at on quest for a total of about Five years, I think. Well, if we did two and a half years or two years where we were doing carpentry almost full-time, you know, and then we quit that.
Speaker 2:You know, an omqvist was the place where we like hired our first employees. We had our first like marketing director, you know when we were there and and, but it was, you know, we were still, you know, pretty small Right, but we kept acquiring equipment and we also kept acquiring space there at Almquist. So we were initially we were renting that little cafe space. Then we needed a place to store our beans and do some of the bean prep, so then we started renting the break room, the employee break room there at Almquist as well. They loved you, yeah, they literally loved us. Then we needed even more space and so we rented their. They have a conference room that was right above our production area, and so we rented that whole conference room. So we were probably using up a total of like 1200 square feet maybe by the time we left Almquist.
Speaker 1:I bet the rent went up from 350.
Speaker 2:It did, but Eric still kept it. He was yeah he was very good.
Speaker 2:Then we were, you know, we were feeling like we were needing a new spot. We were getting kind of tight and it was about that time that we were approached by a guy named David Mulherton. Do you know Dave Mulherton? Sure, yep, he was. You know. He's a landlord, property owner in Eureka and he had a property next to the co-op that had been vacant on four street. And he was like I want you guys, really want you guys, in there, and we're like Dave Can't afford it. Yeah, I'm like.
Speaker 2:I got 1200 square feet here and you're looking, you want me to rent 7,000 square feet, like I'm not gonna have yeah, I don't. I'm not even selling that amount of chocolate a month to even pay the rent. So he realized that he had, you know, probably barked up the wrong tree and so then he kind of let it go. And then he came back to us probably six or so months later and he's like I just really want you in the building. It's like what's it gonna take?
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was really awesome. I mean he, you know, our landlords have saved our bacon over the years, I would say yeah. And so, you know, he were like okay, he gave us, you know, made us a deal that we couldn't refuse you know, and he had we had, you know, this whole arrangement to where we were gonna have rent increases that would be tied to, like our sales increases, cause he didn't want to put us out of business, but he wanted to get from what he was renting it to us to.
Speaker 1:Great way to escalate, yeah.
Speaker 2:Worth. But you know he was kind, generous, flexible and you know, and he made it work. And you know, I think Dustin and I were thinking oh, it's gonna take us like five years to get up to what you want your rent to be, and he knew different. So it was like, I think it was maybe a year or maybe two years. We were Cause he just started producing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we started producing and you know, and it was, it was going well and it was kind of like around that time, you know you had talked about the micro thing and we were still at on quest, right Towards the end of our time there, and we got approached by, you know, the micro.
Speaker 1:Discovery network. I said it was on CNN.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's CNN, that's right. He had a show on discovery called Dirty Jobs.
Speaker 1:His big one, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that ran for a bunch of years.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Then he I mean, I don't know the whole, like everything that went on, but based on the long story short, he ended up at CNN with a similar themed show called Somebody's Gotta Do it, somebody, yeah, and it was just about people doing unusual things that they enjoyed, you know, making a career out of it.
Speaker 1:So that was that was-. So they called you guys and said hey, mike wants to come out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually what happened was they called Cypress Grove? Oh that's funny. Mary Cause they wanted to do yeah, they wanted to do a thing there at Cypress Grove and you know, god bless the folks at Cypress Grove. They were like you know who else you should go see while you're here, as Dick Taylor.
Speaker 1:So instead of I hadn't been Mary Keane at the time right.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it was Mary. We have some other friends in the marketing department there, so they pointed you guys out.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So then we then the show kind of, instead of just being about, you know, about Cypress Grove, we had a spot with Dennis Rao from Los Bagels. He was kind of moonlight there, sure, and so yeah that, and so we recorded that out at AlmQuest, but by the time it aired we were at the new building, you know. So it was weird watching it in this like time capsule, but that show gave us a real huge, real big boost for online sales. Interesting, yeah, whenever that show airs, even to this day, because it's still Because it just dropped it On YouTube Publicly or YouTube yeah, and we got a not a huge spike but but it still still works. It was like one day we showed up at work this is only like a maybe a month ago and you're like, normally, you know, we have, say, 20 online orders, you know overnight or whatever, and you're like, all of a sudden you show up in the morning and you're like there's 150?
Speaker 1:Oh, what happened? What's going on here? You know what happened here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're like what's wrong with this? You know, so we can, we can see where the click-throughs came from. And so you're like, oh, everybody clicked over to our website from YouTube. And then you go to YouTube and you're like, oh, oh, that's what happened.
Speaker 1:The show's airing again, but yeah, it's amazing. It's like it just keeps and he just he did a great job because he's just a cool guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I could tell you just like connected with you guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was really fun. Yeah, nice, nice band yeah.
Speaker 1:So do do location. And now, how long were you at the new old location?
Speaker 2:We were there for eight years. We had a five year lease, Okay, and right at the end of that five year lease was kind of when, you know, cannabis was becoming legal and property values on our particular block in the street went through the roof. Everything went crazy. And so you know, our landlord, he decided he was, you know, ready to sell. He's, I think you know, getting ready to retire, kind of. And so he's just trying to like Sure and load some stuff. And you know, when the market's real hot, that's a great time to sell so high.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we weren't ready to move then.
Speaker 1:unfortunately, yeah For him. Do you have a buyer right away?
Speaker 2:No, he didn't. He did not have a buyer right away and he also wasn't going to kick us out, which is the most amazing thing. That's cool, you know. He could have said hey, you know you're not in a lease anymore, you guys need to get out, right. But he, you know he would always check in on us, and you know how much longer. Because what he wanted to do was to write a little extension in the lease and so, even if he sold, we would still be protected. You know, for a certain amount of time.
Speaker 1:What a guy yeah.
Speaker 2:He's. I can't say enough great stuff about Dave Mulhern he's I knew him when he owned our kid.
Speaker 1:Audio yeah, back on the Plaza a hundred years ago.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, anyway, so he. So we ended up being there for eight years, three years out of our lease. He kept us in there and charged us through the nose for rent, but you know, still yeah.
Speaker 1:Poor buddy to leave. He deserves it at that point, you know. So then, the rebuild of the foot of East street, where you're at now that all's concurrent.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, and I mean, that process took us four years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was age a man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was painful, it was real painful. But you know just the way that like things go. You know Dustin and I aren't like the biggest business geniuses, and so you know you think, okay, it's going to look this way. And then the reality of things and like oh, that's how it's actually going to look Pay a compliment.
Speaker 1:The cool thing about you guys is not you guys. I think you have tons of mentors and coaches and fans and people that love you guys and supporters, and what do you I mean name another word, but that it's been a team thing and you guys have paid back and spades in terms of to the community. Oh yeah, I mean, it definitely has been has been.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, a huge network of people that have believed in us you know our wives for one.
Speaker 1:So forget the wives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're right there, but you know I mean I think that when Dustin and I in the early stages we're like, okay, is this chocolate thing going to work, I think you know we felt like okay, well, you know, humboldt County's got a wonderful intensely by local. They support local businesses.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, we do.
Speaker 2:In a way that's just unbelievable, and so I think that that's what gave us the courage to start. This thing is we're like well, if we can just get a booth at the farmer's market, we probably could sell the 25 chocolate bars a week. You know, they're because they want to buy local. Right, and if it's amazing they're going to buy double Right. And so that you know, so it has been the you know, our local community and people that want to eat chocolate and talk about it, give it as gifts.
Speaker 2:They want to take pictures of it when they're like overseas or what happened. Yeah, we get pictures said to us of store displays all over the place. Right, people are like oddly proud of it. It's fun for people to go, you know, to show up at a chocolate shop and you know, in some bougie place in New York city and be like I know those guys. That comes from my town.
Speaker 1:That's pretty cool. That's my chocolate, that's where I'm from. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, there's a local ownership which is I don't know how you market that, how one could market that magic. I mean I love Las Bagels, but I and I'm proud of them, but I can't think of another product. I mean, you know, johnny will pull out a Dick Taylor bar when we're in I don't know LA or something. Hey, do you guys want to try some of this? Like it's like Holy Communion. Yeah, it's like. Yeah, no, I'll love that. And the first thing is there any cannabis in it? No, no, it's not cannabis. Okay, just try it. Just got you got to let it sit there, and so there's always that coach approach. So I'm going to bring this in. So I'm going to ask you three things that you're proud of and then maybe kind of the legacy you want to leave and we'll wrap here. But so three things that you're proud of in your life this far.
Speaker 2:Gosh, I just celebrated 19 years of marriage. I'm pretty, pretty proud of that right now. We had a. It was, you know, this last year I mean just in all honesty has been really, really tough. I mean, from Labor Day last year until basically the first week of December, you know, dustin and I worked seven days a week Crazy.
Speaker 1:And long out into the evening Just moving everything over and getting it all set up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know we, we needed to, dustin and I needed to do a lot of the finish work in the building because we, you know, we needed to cut some stuff out of the budget. So the cheapest way to cut it, you know Labor. Yeah, it's the labor. So that meant that Dustin and I you know, kind of reluctantly.
Speaker 2:We're going to do a lot of the, the load of all the finish work, so anyway, that was just like a long push and it's hard on a family when you're just not around. It's really rough yeah.
Speaker 1:So recovery time.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, just we, you know it took us a lot of work to get through that, my wife and I, but I feel like we're on the other side of that Nice, I feel like our marriage is, you know, stronger than it's been in a while. So, anyway, that to me, I'm like I'm so so you know proud of that.
Speaker 1:That's great, that work-life balance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and I'm, and I am obviously real proud of the. You know the business that Dustin and I have built. It's I, you know, daily I walk through that building and I think how did I get here? Right, how, how is this palace? Yeah, how is this like? How is this even possible? Like all this equipment? Where did it all come from?
Speaker 1:Where did it?
Speaker 2:It's magic. Yeah, you know when you're in the in the thick of it all the time you don't. It's like the frog being boiled in the pot. Like I, I don't necessarily feel all you know.
Speaker 1:like the, the building of the business Cause you're just like in it, in it in it, we're in it all the time.
Speaker 2:But if you step back and you're like, yeah, like we were out at Almquist with, you know, $100 of countertop grinding equipment.
Speaker 1:Not that long ago, yeah.
Speaker 2:Not that long ago.
Speaker 1:No, it's true, it's true, and I think just to see the fruit of your labor has got to be mind boggling, yeah so that's really fun.
Speaker 2:And you know and I'm also gosh there's lots of things I'm proud of. I'm proud of Eureka. I think that Eureka is poised to do some really, really neat things. You know, like when I came to Humboldt State you know you live in Arcada, arcada's the cool town it always feels like Eureka's a little bit more of like, you know, the armpit of Humboldt County. I guess that when you live in Arcada, you look down your notes.
Speaker 2:But you know, then, when I thought about like, well, I want to buy a house or I want to, you know, where can you afford that? And Eureka, eureka, but. And so that was like initially the thing that drove us down here, but I really, I just feel like all of the things that are going on, I feel like, you know, the city council's got a pretty, you know, forward thinking vision and so I'm like proud of our town. I love it when people come up here and I like to show them around and like show them all the cool stuff that Eureka, you know, has got to offer. So I'm proud of that. I like to be, I'm really proud that I live in Eureka and that it's, you know, it's a place that we're trying to bring up and make really cool.
Speaker 1:I move forward, make it ready for our kids your grandkids. Which is probably not that far away. For some of us had grand dogs till 10 years five years ago. Now we have 10 grandkids. It's like what's, what's? The stuff happens quick.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I love it and yeah, thanks for sharing this. So what? What? This makes perfect segue. So what do you see for Humboldt's future? What would you like to see, what do you think the needs are, the strengths and maybe, briefly, what you would want to. If you could wait for your the magic chocolate wand and fix it, what would you see for? What do you see for Humboldt in Eureka?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I mean, I always say this. I think that you know, humboldt County, I think, is like really, it's just such a unique place, you know, and part of it is our isolation, you know. So that's, that's something that makes us unique. You know, you work like five hours north of San Francisco and we get a lot of chocolate. Folks come in to visit, or different suppliers, whatever, and they're like yeah, we're in San Francisco, we're coming to visit, and I'm like okay, it's only, you're only a couple hours right, yeah, right so you know.
Speaker 2:So the isolation, I think our remoteness kind of drives part of that. But then you know we've got this, we got the university here and that is always this influx of of like new, fresh, creative energy, right. And so I feel, like you know Humboldt County, it's like if you take, if you take people, if you take really creative people with a really like intensely can do spirit, like we're out here behind the Redwood Curtain so you got to make it yourself or find it yourself. So I think when you combine, can do people with creativity, then you get the people that live in Humboldt County. Yeah, you know what I mean when I think of, like Yakima, starting here Coca-Tac, still here, big, you know water business. Lacey's cookies. I mean they make he's been around for a while, they make a giant amount of cookies here that are go all across the.
Speaker 1:US.
Speaker 2:Cypress Grove, obviously. So it's like there's just this like history of people like, well, I want to stay in Humboldt County, so how can I use my how?
Speaker 1:can I do it? How can I do it?
Speaker 2:So we do it ourselves we make it ourselves.
Speaker 2:We're gonna make it, yeah, figure it out ourselves. I think that that's just something that, like, I see time and time again and obviously I'm kind of in this like business, entrepreneurial, you know segment of the population, but it's just something that you see like time and time again and so I just really hope that that's kind of where Humboldt can really kind of like land is this place of like intense creativity and kind of this hot bed for wow, I can't believe that came out of there.
Speaker 1:Wow, you know they make these new bikes in Humboldt. Yeah, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:And certainly you know. I mean I think that the, the, you know there's a lot of talk about the wind generation aspect of things. I mean it just seems like for so long Humboldt's been really in a resource extraction type of economy. You know we had fishing. That's kind of largely failed. Timber has largely failed. Cannabis is largely failing, largely failing.
Speaker 2:So it's like, you know, we've just we've always been kind of we've moved from like one resource extraction like kind of thing, and so I'm like it's, you know, there's other industry that seems to be springing up that hopefully, is like a little more sustainable and a little more like long, longterm and yeah, and I think we're doing that, yeah.
Speaker 1:Pittsburgh really didn't do that with steel after that, or Detroit after cars were gone. So it's kind of hopefully we won't be a rest belt, as it were. Yeah, and.
Speaker 2:I mean, and I just and that, and I don't think that we will or some. I'm confident that it won't be like that. I think that there's enough uniqueness and there's a can do thing that is spirit that's alive and well.
Speaker 1:I like it. So let's talk about your legacy and then we'll wrap up. What do you, what would you see as your legacy? What are they gonna say about you at the service at the Adornie? Oh man, what would you like them to say? What do you think?
Speaker 2:they? I don't know. It's funny because I do think about this Sometimes. I'm like when I die, will anybody show up at the? Of course they come on.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:That'll be 20 or 30 people. Yeah, exactly that handful. You know, I would just love to, I would like to be, you know, seen as somebody that had that made a positive impact on you know, on the community. Somebody that was, yeah, like a, you know, a team player, somebody that always worked towards moving the, moving the dialogue forward, you know, pushing, pushing growth in a responsible and sustainable way.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:I mean, I, of course you're like, yeah, I'd like to be known for like making great chocolate, but I just want people to be like he was just a good. He was like just a nice guy he was. He was down to earth, he was level headed, he was really.
Speaker 1:He was the only guy who's a dad. Yeah, it's like.
Speaker 2:I guess, on the one hand, you're like I just want to be like, you know normal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know. That's good, I like that. What is it going to say on your tube? Stone Got a phrase. I'll let you think about it. Well like.
Speaker 2:I need like a life phrase.
Speaker 1:So a couple of funny ones that have come forward, that's all folks. Another one was what did Linda Cooley say? She, she tried. I like that it's like oh yeah, gave it a go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Gave it your best shot. I don't know if I have an answer for you on that, but that's something that I will. I'll probably think about that all night long.
Speaker 1:Yeah, think about that. I should have said that one thing. I know I've got it, but it's, we'll edit it in, like Punch my voice. Somebody said I don't have anything because I want to be buried under a tree in the backyard.
Speaker 2:No, tube stone, I go. That's a good answer.
Speaker 1:So you know it wouldn't be, we couldn't tie it off without talking about Huckflit for a minute. Just the band you can answer our stellar in the community and I think you brought your mandolin right.
Speaker 2:I did.
Speaker 1:Do you want to? You want to hold it while I ask a Huckflin question just for like 30 seconds and we'll tie it off? I was thinking. What I was thinking is that you could do, you know, another hour on the mandolin as we sign off, Right, and?
Speaker 2:so here this is my, my current axe. I've got a couple couple of mandolins that I play.
Speaker 1:Weber.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a. This is a Weber bitter root.
Speaker 1:That's older right.
Speaker 2:This actually is a super old. This mandolin, I think, is from two dated in here. No, I have a serial number and not a date. Huh beautiful. But it's a Bend organ, weber. They've moved around a little bit.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:It's signed by Bruce Weber as well.
Speaker 1:Made of Bend. Yeah, beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's great this mandolin when we played sorry, I should talk into the microphone, there you go when we played at the Arkley center was like our first, like big ish gig, you know.
Speaker 1:Was it a Christmas show? Was?
Speaker 2:it a Christmas show, yeah, and we had played a few weddings earlier that year, so I finally had enough money to buy this mandolin. So this mandolin, all the money to buy this came from playing the mandolin.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's cool. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, so anyway, real quick, one minute, two minutes on the band. How did the band come together? What's your trajectory? It's almost unfair, but we've got to bring it up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. You guys are yeah. So we started I mean basically 2008 or before. It predates the chocolate business. Okay, and like I said, I went to high school, in middle school in Kansas City and my mom's always been into like bluegrass. She was in when we lived in Tahoe she had a clogging company called the Tahoe Tahoe Truckie Clogging Company and they would yeah, they'd clog it like rodeos and different you know, is it the wood shoes and doing the whole thing?
Speaker 2:Not wood shoes, they're like tap shoes. But they, you know the guys, her and her like brother, a couple of brothers and some sisters were in this Tahoe Truckie Clogging Company.
Speaker 2:They had their like little overall outfits and whatnot so always been around kind of you know blue grassy type music, and so in high school we started going to this thing called the Walnut Valley Festival. It's in Winfield, kansas, and they have a four day annual bluegrass festival there. They also hold the national like flat pick championships and the Mandolin championships and feels it was all like really great musicians I actually. I watched Chris Thiele win the national Mandolin championship at Winfield when he was young, 10.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:I mean, he was just this, like tiny little. You know he's the guide there, right? Yeah, now he's, you know.
Speaker 1:Who's the other guy? Marty Stewart? Oh, there's a lot of good he's bigger though Would those guys come to a show like this or to that?
Speaker 2:venue. No, they're a little bit big for that, but Nickel Creek played at Winfield when they were all like 14. They were all little kids the Watkins and Chris Thiele, they were all.
Speaker 1:Who's the new grass? Sam Bush, yes. Would Sam come to a show like that?
Speaker 2:No, okay A little bit too big, yeah, but anyway. So we went to Walnut Valley Festival. You know a lot of years and there was a band one year called the Wilders. They're from Kansas City. They're not together anymore and that was another thing, like watching these brothers play or make chocolate. I was like the Wilders were insane, really good.
Speaker 2:They all played around one microphone and it was like it just seemed like a V8 engine running when they were playing and it was just like the heads going up and down like the pistons of the engine I mean, it was just, it was raw, and I was like this is amazing. And so I came back one year that, the first year I saw the Wilders and I was like Dustin, we needed to do this, we could do this you know, they weren't amazing musicians, like they weren't just all flashy on their instruments but the amount of energy and like what they could captivate on stage was unreal, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, you know, dustin and I started fiddling around or noodling around and his sister-in-law, mary Beth, played the violin. So we kind of started this like little trio thing and we would play down at Arts Alive in Old Town in front of Eureka Books and brought on a bass player. And you know, was that Ray at that point? No, it was not Ray at that point, it was a guy, nick Hoffman, okay. And so Nick played bass for a long time and you know, we just kind of did whatever we could. You know played mostly for free, little fundraising events or whatever.
Speaker 2:And it, you know it, just kind of been always this thing that's just been in the background the whole time Part of that creative outlet to the whole deal.
Speaker 2:And then Mary Beth moved away and so we didn't have a fiddle player anymore. We brought on a couple, a guy in a groin, he played electric guitar and she played keyboard. That was Brian Pilger and, well, it was Lauren Hoffman, but now they're married so, and so that was kind of when we started kind of more down the road that we're on now, a little more electric kind of rock vibe. And then they moved away and we brought on another guitar player. He's great, yeah, he is very, very good. And then Dustin's sister-in-law now is in the band and her name's Evangela. She's wonderful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sing's got a great voice and she plays keyboards too. So, yeah, yeah, that's kind of you know the thing. It's amazing that the band now out dates predates my wedding you know my marriage and I'm almost getting to the point, probably in a few more years, where I'll have been I'll spend more time in my life playing in the band than not playing in the band. You know it's weird when you are I start to enter your 40s and you start my other family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you started things in your 20s. You're like man, I'm like over.
Speaker 1:Been around with these guys Half of my lifetime with these guys. So my experience with the band is that we'd always heard hey gotta go see these guys, Uncle Boy, or Flint Uncle Boy, you gotta check them out. They're great but they never play. Oh Well, they play at Christmas and they play at the arcade at.
Speaker 1:Playhouse and finally it was 17 or 18, we saw you guys at Humble Folklife at Blue Lake, oh yeah, where we saw Mary Beth two weeks ago, yeah, first time. And I don't know what happened at that show, but there's something, that energy from Kansas came. It was like woohoo.
Speaker 2:And I'm going this is.
Speaker 1:I mean, Russ has got this thing dialed in, or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there was yeah, the sound guy was good you know really good.
Speaker 1:And I Is there better shows? I mean, I don't know if you can rank them, but was that a good a feel, good show for y'all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I honestly don't remember that. Like you know, we've played that show there for a lot of years.
Speaker 1:I'm not, don't totally remember that year, patrick, yeah, oh, no, just this last one this year, two weeks ago. Oh, that the energy was so good. Yeah, in Blue Lake, oh you're saying we're getting better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I inferred it and implied it. You know that show was I'm just teasing you. That show was really fun. Yeah, yeah, you know, we've been doing it now for you know a long time, and the cool part about doing something for a long time is you don't get as nervous about doing it. Right, you know anymore.
Speaker 1:Cause you're like I'm familiar with I'm a natural podcast host, totally Hello. Hey, we're killing this. So there's Nick, and thank you for being here.
Speaker 2:So you're right. So it becomes more fun, though, because you're you know, initially you're probably like I don't know what to say or how do I it can be weird, yeah, yeah, but when I make it weird, Right. But once you've done it enough, then you're like oh, this is just fun, you get to hang out with somebody. So for us, you know we get to, you know we are performing, and so that you do get nervous, but at the same time, you know, everybody just wants to have a good time.
Speaker 2:I want to have a good time too, so you're like, if everybody just wants to have fun, then it's not super pressure filled, you know.
Speaker 1:Right, it becomes a joy. Yeah, the joy factor, that's the truck, that's the hope. And Russ is. He's the sound man for Bruce Covern.
Speaker 2:And he's the dude right. He's beyond the dude.
Speaker 1:He's like the seventh band member. Yeah, dustin called him seven.
Speaker 2:Yeah, russ Cole is, he's really amazing.
Speaker 1:What a nice band too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he's you know he has done, you know so many shows at center arts. I mean, he's incredibly talented and he's one of those people that like he's beyond Humboldt County and his abilities, but he's still here doing it.
Speaker 1:He's an example of a lot of things. You're talking about Somebody that can do and is magical and gifted and all those words, yeah. So any parting shots before?
Speaker 2:we go. No, just like the super, super thankful that you would have me and it's great to connect and really just chat. I feel like we've just been mainly hanging out for an hour now and shooting breeze.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, which is really really great. Appreciate you a lot coming in and dicktaylarchocolatescom, yep and Huckleberry Flint.
Speaker 2:There's probably not acom there. You'd have to find us, I think, huckleberry Flint band on Instagram or in.
Speaker 1:Amazon or Siri or somebody's got you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you can find our. Yeah, you can find our like albums, alexa play Huckleberry Flint. And that will happen. It's weird there's a whole catalog.
Speaker 1:It's actually 20 years. Anyway, thanks, adam, appreciate you. Thank you.
